UBEC budgets N2.7bn for construction of classrooms in 5,010 primary schools

THE Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) says it has set aside N2,768,908,275.44 to support 2,505 communities for the building of two classrooms each in 5,010 primary schools across the country.

Speaking during the launch of the School-Based Management Committee-School Improvement Programme (SBMC-SIP) at the Coronation Hall of the Government House in Kano, the UBEC’s executive secretary, Dr. Hamid Bobboyi, disclosed that over 120 schools had benefitted from the disbursement of funds.

“The guiding principle of the self-help and community engagement approach is to engender strong partnership and the desire to draw and harness state resources and skills alongside the abundant material and human resources in the community, with a view to developing the basic education sub-sector,” he said.

According to him, these ranged from N250,000, N1 million, N5 million to N7 million for renovation, construction of blocks of classrooms, supply of furniture, completion of abandoned buildings/classrooms as well as purchase of teaching materials.

Bobboyi said: “It is a view widely held that no nation can sustain a robust, functional and qualitative basic education without the meaningful and strategic involvement of its citizenry.

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“The need for instituting the SBMC-SIP, therefore, was informed by the fact that the overall success of the basic education sub-sector in Nigeria depends largely on the level of community awareness, participation and support to the programme.

“The vision of the commission in the SBMC-SIP was, therefore, to put up a strategy for school development whereby community initiated self-help projects would be implemented by the SBMCs.”

The Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, who was represented by the permanent secretary in the ministry, Sunny Echono, said the implementation experiences of Universal Basic Education programme) had shown that the delivery of basic education in the country is faced with daunting challenges that militate against Nigeria’s drive towards meeting her developmental goals and global expectations.

“Thus, it became imperative within the context of the challenges such as phenomenal inadequacy of teacher quality and sufficiency, inefficient infrastructure, large size of out-of-school children, skyrocketing population growth and inadequate finances that the full involvement of all and sundry is required to reverse the trend,” he said.

While speaking on the occasion, the Kano State governor, Dr. Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, said his administration had initiated community participation in the development of basic education.

Ganduje noted that the move had generated billions of naira for renovation and rehabilitation of schools, provision of books and other writing materials as well as reduced the number of out-of-school children in the state.